The Navdanya Movement 🌱

 Hyewon Lee

Topic: The Navdanya Movement

Date: 2021/12/09

The Navdanya movement was initiated in India to protect biodiversity and to promote the seed-saving movement around the world. It was founded by woman environmentalist Dr. Vandana Shiva as she wanted to guarantee seed freedom and food sovereignty for small farmers. This movement has progressed for about 30 years and was first initiated due to the sudden outbreak of the GMO crisis, which involves various health issues such as toxicity and allergenicity. The goal of the Navdanya movement is to ensure a new society in which economic justice and ecological responsibilities exist among consumers and farmers. Arising from this movement, Navdanya International was established in Italy in 2011 to demonstrate such qualities at an international level. One of its promotions refers to the Global Movement for Seed Freedom, which was launched to create unity among diverse organizations that have shown interest in saving seeds. As a matter of fact, this movement has succeeded in creating a strong connection between international and local networks/campaigns throughout its short history. Not only this, but the Navdanya movement has also been providing multiple volunteer work opportunities for those who are interested in assisting the campaign promotions. Some examples of its major events are ‘Ecofeminism,’ ‘Soil Not Oil,’ ‘Youth Leadership for Earth Democracy,’ and ‘Gandhi, Globalisation, and Earth democracy. One interesting piece of news is that the Navdanya organization has recently launched an online course named “ClimAlt” for students who want to learn about environmental changes, causes, impacts, and solutions. Through this online course, young people will gain easy access to this platform’s materials and will be able to build further knowledge on climate change and its potential consequences.